Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming more abundant, and the risk of a UAV-airplane collision is growing with their popularity. Airplane collisions with birds and ice have been researched for several decades, however those impacts are not representative of an airplane with a UAV. UAVs contain materials which are harder and denser than birds. Here simulations of a UAV ingestion into a jet engine are studied with the commercially available software LS-DYNA. Parametric study models of fan stages of mid-sized business jets housed in a containment tank were used for the ingestion simulations. Collaborating research groups created the two finite element UAV models that were used in this study. The collaborating research groups simulated and compared their finite element models of key UAV components against experimental crash tests to ensure UAV component model accuracy. This computational research shows that UAVs are capable of causing severe damage to jet engines, and lays the foundation for further computational and experimental studies of ingestion events.
